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Thursday, March 23, 2017

Randomized Panel Facades in Revit with Dynamo

We’ve all seen them and admired their awesomeness. Yes, I am talking about random panelized facades. A quick Google search yields some awesome results.

But the question is, how do I make something like this in Revit? Like really in Revit, not a mass, none of that stuff.

Well, I am here to tell you that you can. After looking at examples and thinking on this for a bit, I finally figured out that we have the perfect tool for the job. Revit curtain walls + the Revit API, (through Dynamo). Curtain wall? But why? Because the Autodesk developers were so nice that they gave us this magnificent little tool.

Using this tool, along with some automation through Dynamo, we can make Revit remove random grids for us!

To get started we can draw a curtain wall, with a minimum panel layout rule.

We specify minimums because Dynamo is going to remove some every now and then.

After we draw our curtain wall with the layout rule, we can edit the profile to make it look closer to the source image.

And now we can jump into Dynamo!

First, we need to select our curtain wall and get the grid! Luckily custom package Rhythm has a node to get the grid.

Next, we can obtain the curves from this grid.

Utilizing another custom Dynamo package, Lunchbox, we can randomize the order of every curtain grid segment.

After they are randomized we need to take some from the lists to remove them, (We can see which ones will be removed because they are blue).

Finally, we can set up the option to remove grids. Once again, Rhythm has a great tool for this.

We are almost there, but the wall wouldn’t be complete without some solids.

And here is an animation of this workflow in action.

Did you know EvolveLAB helps firms in the AEC industry with Computational Design? Do you have a project that needs some computational love? Want to host a computational workshop at your firm? Reach out to us at bill.allen@evolvelab-inc.com